Talking Simpsons - Syndication The Sweetest Plum With Found Footage Fest

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

September 19, 1994: a day that will live in... Wait, what's the opposite of infamy? 31 years ago, the lives of Simpsons fans changed forever when their favorite show went from a weekly thing to a twice-daily thing thanks to the power of syndication. In this week's format-breaking podcast, we take a look at the programming package that made a certain era of The Simpsons a second language for TV-addicted latchkey kids. Our guests: Joe Pickett and Nick Prueher from Found Footage Fest Support this podcast and get over 200 ad-free bonus episodes by visiting Patreon.com/TalkingSimpsons and becoming a patron! And please follow the official Twitter, @TalkSimpsonsPod, not to mention Bluesky and Instagram!

This podcast is brought to you by patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. Head there to check out exclusive podcasts like Talking Futurama, Talk King of the Hill, The What a Cartoon movie podcast, and tons more. Doors this event or product. Ahoy, hoi, everybody, and welcome to Talking Simpsons where we check our local listings. I'm one of your host, The Man Who Steels Two Minutes from Every Episode, Bob Mackie, and this is our chronological exploration of The Simpsons, who is here with me today, as always. Often partnered with home improvement reruns.

It's Henry Gilbert. And who are our special guests on the line? I'm Nick, now airing five days a week. And I'm Joe from the Found Footage Festival, and I am so smart SMRT. And this week's episode is a little something we're calling syndication the sweetest plum. Starting September 19th on Fox 29. And yes, we're breaking format. And joining us once again are the guys from the Found Footage Fest, Joe Pickett and Nick Pruer.

They were last on together to talk about the auto show from season three. Welcome back to the show, Jonah. Good to be back. Love it here. Thanks for having us. Yes, you guys are about to go on tour and we thought, what a perfect time to have on the guys from Found Footage Fest for an episode that's all about things people remember watching from ancient VHS's. Yeah, I mean, I remember we still find these, by the way, at thrift stores, like tapes of Simpsons episodes from syndication. That made it so much easier to just like have a tape.

tape going, set it for that hour it aired. So yeah, a lot of times we find tapes. And now, of course, the commercials are the valuable part of those. In our family, we had a Simpsons tape because that night of TV, there was a lot of good stuff on. Yeah, it was the Funniest Home Videos was competing up against it. The Cosby Show for a while was competing against it. I mean, it was always set up against, you know, other good shows.

So you had to record it. So a lot of people did. And the Simpsons first entered syndication on September 19, 1994. And as always, Henry will tell us what happened on this mythical day in real world history. Time cop tops the box office, the TV series ER debuts on NBC, and the World Series is officially canceled. This was the end of a summer of a big baseball strike as the Simpson syndication began. And this was when I think I had pretty much my light childhood love of baseball had kind of ended with the end of the world series. Or this baseball strike in 94.

That was a weird year. Yeah, no baseball that year. And I remember like everybody started hating baseball at that point. So good thing that Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds and Sammy Sosa did steroids and got people back interested in it. Finally, the game was exciting again. Yeah, I know. I think they should just allow steroids, right? Wasn't that exciting to watch these behemoths just mash home runs?

Did they clamp down on it now? Yeah, you get suspended and it's no fun anymore. But man, it was a rough year. Yeah, I mean, if you get paid that much money, the contract should be, I will destroy my body and my mind for five years for your entertainment. For sure. Because they got the rest of their life to live. That probably knocks off 15 years off their life.

But you know what? They have some glorious years. They're out partying. They have unlimited money. Yeah. Stereways really ramped up the rock and wrestling era, too. I mean, that was like all the sudden, it used to just be like guys who look like they delivered milk or something. You know, just like big, beefy dudes with big waste.

And then all of a sudden it was, you know, Hulk Hogan and all those guys. So I think, yeah, steroids improved sports. Yeah, wrestling used to be nothing but Oafs, and then it became Hunks for a while. Yeah. No thank you to the Oafs. Yeah, the ER debut. It was a super show. It was produced by Michael Crichton and Stephen Spielberg.

And it was also, if you were reading TV guide then for your Simpson syndication times, you'd also see that they were pitted against each other in the fall previews with Chicago Hope. It was like they're both Chicago Hospital shows, which would win. And ER one handily because it lasted for 15 seasons. I had never watched ER. My family didn't watch ER, but I did watch the Quentin Tarantino directed episode. I think he directed it right after Pulp Fiction. And Tarantino was red-hot then.

And I remember it was like, Quentin Tarantino directs ER. And I watched it and I was like, it feels like an ER episode. This isn't Pulp Fiction 2 that I was expecting. Yeah, this show went on way longer than I thought it did. And to me, this is the show I watched in the mid-90s with my mom because she is a nurse, or she wasn't nurse. she's retired now and she would tell me that's right, that's wrong, that's right. And then I kind of forgot about it, but because I do retronauts, I do look 20 years in the past, 25 years in the past.

And I was surprised to learn that before reality television took over around 2003, ER was the most watched show on television for like five years in a row. It's wild. I mean, yeah, and then the pit now is like doing it all over again. I never watched it, like it was an appointment TV, but whenever I tuned in for an episode, it was pretty entertaining. Like, they found a good formula. I mean, it's a recipe that can't lose because it's constant action. And like if there's a lull, then they just bring in a new injured person right there. I mean, like, I started watching The Pit because everybody was talking about it. And I made it through like six episodes.

And I was like, I get it. I get it. It's just not for me. But it is nonstop action of like bloody action too. Well, the pit is currently involved in like a lawsuit with the Michael Crichton estate is saying like, you guys pitched us an ER spin-off series. and we turned it down and then you just hired Noah Wiley

to play a different man working in an emergency room. Yeah, and the story of ER, the original series, is very odd because it seems that Michael Crichton wrote a screenplay in 1974 that never got produced. And when Jurassic Park hit it big,

they're like, what else does he have? What can we do? They find this screenplay, and because he wrote a screenplay 20 years prior, he got millions and millions of dollars based on this series. Oh, man.

The dude was hot. I mean, sphere, remember sphere? Almost anything he had his hands on. Congo? Yeah, Congo. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I remember seeing Congo in the theaters. Nick, you and I went to see Congo in the theaters. Yeah, I think we got a free press screening.

From the Onion. I was working at the Onion at the time, and we would get free press screens every so often. We had to drive, you know, I think it was like an hour away, but it was like, okay, let's do it. Free Congo. I don't remember anything about the movie. I remember the CG was bad even at the time, you know, like it was in its infancy, so anything was impressive and even then it was like oh those guerrillas look terrible i bet it'd be really funny now yeah that might be worth the rewatch and you know michael crayton he was a climate change denier but he did direct westworld so all is forgiven right he's a climate change denier well yeah yes very strange because all of his books were about approximating hard science and he had a background

yeah that's why i'm shocked medical student or something or an actual doctor i believe speaking of speculative fiction the time cop film is number one bob your wife did the incredible of I think logging every single Jean-Claude Van Damme film in Leatherboxed? Yes, it took her a very long time, and there are way more than you would ever imagine. And some of them, he's barely in. This one, though, it always seemed interesting, but then I found out

the time travel element is squandered completely because he goes to the far-off year of 2004. And there's not a whole lot of timey happening in this movie. Yeah, I saw it for the first time. I think Shout Factory did a 4K, like, in the last couple of years. so I picked that up. And entertaining movie, I got to say, I really liked it, but I was hoping for like a director commentary.

That's always my favorite thing. And I think a reason to get physical media, get a disc now. But there's nothing. I mean, it was a great pristine transfer of a Van Dam movie, but no extras. I was a little bit disappointed. What I want to hear every story a film director has about working with Jean-Claude Van Dam

because I'm sure they have many funny ones, I would assume. Oh, exactly. I think Hard Target. There's some good. commentaries out there, but I guess I don't know. Was he difficult to work with? Yeah, he used a lot of acting powder back in the 90s that made him difficult to work with according to some allegations back then.

I get it. I get it. Yeah, he has been humble now that they're on the eighth Universal Soldier movie, but back then. I didn't see JCVD or? I did. I loved it. It was a good.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don't remember it, but I loved it when I saw it. But that's everything that was happening when this series of The Simpsons debuted in syndication. Yes, and we're breaking format this week because syndication was a huge deal for The Simpsons, as it was for many shows. But this is the reason why we are all Simpsons pill to this very day.

And in fact, it's such a big deal that we stopped asking guests their experience with the show because everybody had the same story. I watched it on Sunday nights, and then I watched it twice a day on my local channel for five, to 10 years. And it just became this very repetitive thing that we pushed away from the show. But we're embracing it now because it was so ubiquitous and it was such an important part of all of our lives. I feel like it's time to discuss it. And Henry spearheaded this whole project here. No, thank you. Yeah. It came up so much, especially, I don't know Nick and Joe, if this was your experience, but like sometimes we would hear from people like, oh, my parents wouldn't let me watch The Simpsons. But when syndication started and it aired at like 5 or 530, they weren't

home from work yet so I could finally watch it. So it made like, it's such an interesting moment in Simpson's history, at least in the United States, because it made a lot of people, Simpsons fans, who weren't before. So it's a legion of latchkey kids. All of a sudden they had something to entertain themselves. I think like, Joe and I are a little older. So, you know, we'd watch the first run ones. And I think what year was the syndication first was it, I think it was like we were a freshman in college when it happened. 94? November 19th, 1994, do you remember where you were that day? Yeah, yeah.

So we were in college, and I think where I went to college in O'Clair, Wisconsin, it aired on the CBS channel. It was on late. It was on like at 1130, but every night a week. And it used to be like we'd record them as they aired Sundays. And then I remember my friend Josh Koffer would have a Simpsons Fest in the summer. Joe, I think you might have come down for one once. I could do a couple of them, yeah. Yeah, where everybody would bring their tapes from the, you know,

the air and that was what you had to do there was no simpson's DVDs yet it wasn't just ubiquitous on syndication yet so you'd watch those you were lucky if they zapped out the commercials but if not you you'd you know fast forward and you'd kind of do a lottery of okay let's play this one then the gabbo episode that you know you'd kind of make your lineup for the night and eat a bunch of junk food but it was a game changer when you could like get done with classes and homework at least at college and then there'd be an episode on when you got home every day. That was a game changer. Henry, do you know the rule on syndication? Like, how many seasons do you need before your show can be syndicated? Ah, well, thank you, Joe. Yes, I have quite a lot of history on that.

Though in the Simpsons case, to answer that first, they decided to wait till there was 100 episodes. Like, that's why they hit 100 with the entire fifth season got them to 102, if you're counting broadcasts. But they, not everybody does this, but the Simpsons waited until they have 100 to syndicate. Okay. All right. Because Seinfeld is what? Seven seasons?

Yeah. I think it's nine seasons. Oh, is it nine seasons? Yeah. Okay. All right. That seems like enough. Yeah.

But I wonder, like, Nick and I, what really bonded us very early on was the show Small Wonder. And that show was syndicated, right? Nick, and I feel like they didn't have many. I think it was first run syndication, though, which is different. That means, like, instead of having enough reruns. Oh, you're automatically. You sell directly to individual networks rather than have a network, you know, produce it for you.

Right. Right. So I think that's a little bit different. But yeah, it shows like out of this world and small wonder, I think we're first-run syndication. And I think those are two different things, right? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Things were made for syndication, like especially cartoons where they would make a 65 episode package for one cartoon,

enough to sustain 13 weeks of nonstop new episodes until they just enter the same rotation over and over. And then some shows moved from network TV to syndication. Shows like two big examples are Mama's family and 21 Jump Street, where these were network shows, and then the network stopped being interested. But then they sold further seasons into syndication. They just made them cheaper, and anyone could pick them up, not just the network who was producing the program. Mama's family did look cheap, too. Yes.

It started cheap. That set just looked rickety. And it looked like that set was just going to fall over. Charles and Chargers that way, too, were the first two seasons, and maybe the first one was network, and then, yeah, it was canceled but got picked up in syndication. And in the hour-long format, Baywatch was a huge example of that success. It started as a network show got canceled. And then thanks to the universal global appeal of slow motion running and bathing suits, it became the biggest show in the world. Yeah, I'm thinking of things like Hercules, The Legendary Journeys and Zena. Those are first-run syndicated shows as well.

Oh, yeah. Okay. Here's a trivia question. I'm going to try and stump you here, Henry. What show that wasn't made for syndication had the fewest seasons that got syndication? Well, that is a tough one, but two big examples that are definitely under 100. There were only like three seasons were Gilligan's Island and Star Trek, the original. They didn't become successful in syndication, and they actually established like residual guidelines because all the actors in both those shows never got a nickel off of the millions and millions made in syndication. Oh, you know what? I thought of another big example.

A Star Trek The Next Generation, that was first run syndication and a huge success story. It was not attached to any singular network. You'd think a network would have pounced on that, right? That should have been a CBS show, given Paramount and everything. Now, do they have a smaller budget if they make it just for syndication? Or do they have the same budget as always? I don't know. Usually, I notice that when a show moved from network to syndication, they were a lot cheaper,

but I think TNG was the outlier and that they were making the prestige television of their time. Yeah. It was big budget for its time. It is, though I think usually syndication does come with some idea of like cheaper production values. But the TV business is different now. But back when companies NBC wouldn't just make a show that then they owned on TV, it was a production company. Thanks to Reagan, that went away.

And now everybody gets to own everything and it's the monopoly. But back then, you know, 20th Century Fox would make a TV show or biacom or screen gems or Lorimar, in the case of Alf. And then they'd sell it to NBC. And then after that was done, then Lorimar's like, well, now we have all these reruns of Valve. Let's sell them both in the U.S. and globally. And they would have to sell them, though, to local broadcasters, again, pre-Ragan media consolidation rules. Local broadcasters would each pay per episode for it for different major markets. Like dozens or even hundreds of markets and at least over 100 markets in the U.S.

Like when I was finding Simpsons press releases, the Simpsons launches in over 140 markets. And you had to negotiate those individually per market. Wow. I think, Joe, we wrote for a show that was sold direct to syndication. Which one? Crazy Talk. Oh, yeah, yeah. And it was funny.

The way it was described to us was like, it was like an old school traveling salesman thing, is they would go to local TV networks and then they would get a big steak dinner, sometimes go to an adult club afterwards for entertainment. They'd get whined and dine, and they'd come out making a deal. to sell this show that even we knew was terrible. We were writing for it. But it was just like these backroom deals still happening in like 2011. I don't even know when that was, 2015 or something.

2015, yeah. But I remember they were like talking to one of the producers and he was like they were so good at skewing the numbers. You know, this is a show. You guys have never heard of crazy talk. You'll never hear of crazy talk. I couldn't find it on TV when we wrote for it. It aired for like six months like in between Mori and Jerry Springer or something like

that. Steve Wilco. I remember this producer just spinning the numbers so well. He's like, guys, we beat Seth Myers last night. I remember he told me that. I was like, well, not really, but like in this one, like using this creative math, yes, we did. Sure. Okay. In this demographic. It almost seemed like a payola thing, though. At least with that, you know, those talk show type things like the mores of the world, like, I mean, I'm sure those do well with daytime audiences, but the show we were on was not, but there was all these deals being made. It sounded like almost very old school, like Mad Men style backroom deals being made. And the production was the same production company as like Mori, Jerry Springer, Steve Wilco's.

It was all that. So, yeah, we got to live in that world for a little while. And bringing it back to The Simpsons, like, they're all like crusty. You know, they're all jaded, old, you know, they've worked in TV forever. And they're like, ah, this is hell. You know, this is death. Let's just do this. Just shoot it.

It doesn't matter. Yeah, I was going to ask everybody on here if they had experience with independent stations when they were growing up. Because when I was growing up, we had the NBC affiliate, the ABC affiliate, the CBS affiliate. But out of Cleveland, we had two independent stations. One was Channel 43, WUAB. One was, I believe, Channel 41 W-O-I-O-I-O-O. The latter became a Fox network right before The Simpsons went on TV. But 43 remained an independent station, and that is where I got my rerun fix, including

The Simpsons. This was the first station near me to carry syndicated Simpsons on the day it launched. Yeah, Fox 47. That's what we had. And that's where we watched. It was new when I was a kid, and that was probably like 89 or some, 88, 89. It was a brand new station, maybe even earlier, like 86, 87. But yeah, that's where we watch Small Wonder. That's the channel that would air Small Wonder and other weird local stuff. I think, yeah, and we got WGN, which had Bozo, that was independent, too. That wasn't like Fox NBC or CBS. That got to Wisconsin. WGN ruled getting that on cable because that's also how I like would double

dip, Save by the Bell syndication reruns because you get an hour on TBS and then you get the WGN hour right after that. You hacked it. You were spoiled rotten. Yeah, Saved by the Bell was the only thing that was syndicated more than the Simpsons and there were only like 80 episodes of that show. But also, if your local station became a Fox station, in the early 90s, there was maybe two hours of Fox programming every day, if you're lucky.

So they had to fill the rest of that schedule with Gilligan's Island and Barnaby Jones and maybe Simpsons reruns and then 20 more hours worth of content. It's like what Me TV looks like now or whatever they call it now. Those Me TV channels, I still love those channels though. Man, whatever we get done with a show and we're back at the hotel at like midnight, I just turn on Me TV and watch like a Bonanza or something or one of the Bonanza knockoffs. You're like, let's explore Hazel This is a comic about the maid.

All right, sure, they're hearing three episodes in a row. Why not? My local Fox, I had forgotten the number, but I had looked it up for my history research on this. I lived in Orange Park, Florida. We got the Jacksonville, Florida channel. And that was Fox 30, W-A-W-S. I loved Fox 30.

It was my favorite channel. I was a member of the Fox Kids Club for the area with Safari Sam was our local Krusty the Clown character. I want there to be a do. documentary about the local clown or the local, you know, there's always the local superhero guy. I think it's usually just like the weatherman. That's like his like side job. For my local station, Channel 43, that Cleveland won, the person that hosted the cartoon block was just a,

what I assume was a middle age woman. She was probably 25. Her name was just Liz. And now that I think about it, she was, I guess, a PA for the network. She couldn't have been of any status there. Oh, man, golden age of TV. And mystery science theater started on like the independent channel in Minneapolis too. And I just liked that feeling where it is just like, okay, we got some time, we got time to fill. So if you got an idea, let's just, you know, use the studio and shoot something. It's like one tier up from public access, I would say. You mentioned MST3K. That was another time where I learned the ins and outs of the business of syndication because the mystery science theater hour was how it was sold in syndication areas because they would chop the two hours

into one hour to fit it onto TV. In specific markets. Yeah, every episode became a two-parter, and then Mike Nelson, to fill out the time, would do intros and atros as Jack Perkins. Oh, right. Yeah, that's how they repackaged it. I forgot about that. And that's the first time.

That's the first way I saw Mystery Science Theater, because we did not get Comedy Central until, like, 1996. So that was my first taste. And I assume we all watched at least six hours of TV a day as a kid, seven if there was something good on. And this was how we discovered so much TV. I will say, though, I was a little bit of a syndication Simpson snob because our family taped most episodes off TV.

I only remember on first run. And then when I saw that scenes got cut from it, it made me, I'd watch it, of course. But I would be like, I would notice every scene that was cut, and it would drive me crazy. It made me so sad we had old money taped off of syndication because that was one of the rare ones we missed, the season two episode, old money. And now, of course, that's all completely. the episodes are not cut anymore since DVD or on streaming. Yeah. And one of the biggest things in early Simpsons online fandom was tracking all of the deleted scenes.

Those guides are still online. Just go online, go to SNPP.com. You can look up, here's every episode, here is everything that was cut from them for syndication. And then when you end up buying the DVDs in the early authors, you're like, oh, right, this scene was in here. I have not seen it since 1993. The one I remember was because I had this, this was my favorite episode. I had it on tape was the Krusty gets canceled episode. And the part I remember that was cut out of syndication that bothered me was,

and now the crazy old man singers. And then they all went, old gray mare, she ain't what she used to be. And they were like dancing on the show to show how far the Krusty show had fallen. And yet that got cut out of the syndicated one, if I'm remembering right, it bothered me. Forgive me if you guys have already tackled this. But how did they decide which scene to cut? Was it writers who decided which scenes to cut? or was it the network?

It sounds like the writers and producers had no say in this. I imagine whatever syndication overlord was in charge had editors that would pare down these episodes to fit into the syndicated package. And then people like Mike Scully, I believe he made his episodes shorter and used the full opening as much as possible so they would cut as little of the episode as they could,

but instead they would just run the full opening and then cut things from the episode. So he was trying to engineer his episodes to be more syndication friendly when he was running the show. I sent an email to both Bill Oakley and Josh Weinstein asking, you know, you guys wrote the 100th episode that, like, began syndication. You then became showrunners during like the height of syndication. Did you, you know, have any say in that? And they said they basically had no interaction period with anybody from 20th television who was in charge of syndication.

Like it was just an entirely separate machine from them. Yeah. I read that the stupid TV. Be more funny? Be more funny. book, and it sounds like they were just in the dark on everything. You know, the writers didn't really have much of a say beyond just writing the episodes. I had a fuller expletive for syndication and what it meant back then.

But, you know, I found a wonderful singer who explains it very well, too. My whole family of three's come. There, it's on that. And we have to explain to the kids what Soul Asylum is now. Is that what's going on? You've opened up a can of worms here, yeah. Yeah. I love that song.

Oh, me too. It's him listing many great Weird Al parodies are just lists of things. And this is him listing all of the first a bunch of old TV show reruns and then also like judge shows and talk shows. Everything that was in 1994 reruns of things or Bad Hair Day was 1994. And then it was 93. It was 96. Oh, wow. You met Weird Al, Henry.

Yes, it's true. I'm emailing him. Yeah, I'm telling Weird Al you did that. I'm so sorry, Weird Al. I have a signed VHS from Weird Al, right? back there. Oh, that's buried with that. That's incredible. But yes, that's a quick explainer of what it used to be like. You would check TV guide, or if your

parents, you know, just got the newspaper that had the TV guide replacement in a weekly stuff, you would often see like, okay, which Simpsons or whatever is playing this week? And you could plan out your whole week of television as a very popular young person that way. My recollection is they did theme weeks, too. Like they do like sports week and it'd be like, you know, the baseball episode or am I remembering that wrong? I feel like the syndicators could have some fun or like around elections. They would do anything that was like political episode.

They would kind of just program them that way. They did have theme weeks. They played around with it. It was very random. They did not go in order at all is my research showed me. Like it did not have said orders. This is also why like until the streaming era, TV show producers were usually told, especially for kids' shows or animated shows,

don't do overarching storylines, because this will air out of, other than the first time it airs, its indication, this will air out of order. So you don't want to be like, well, this person died or whatever as part of your stories, because it'll confuse the people watching.

And especially with cartoons, it was a bittersweet moment when you would round the corner and get back to the pilot episode again, and you realize, oh, I know how this works. There's no more of this show. That's it. Yeah, you finally made it around the horn.

It made you both wistful, and be like, wow, I sure, I did watch a lot of television, didn't I? But syndication still exists, though. I mean, I have YouTube TV, and, you know, I still get all the channels. And Simpsons is still syndicated, right? I mean, whenever I turn it on, it's usually like, you know, season 27 episode or something, you know? Yeah, I wonder if they're still making the cuts. I know we just never covered the syndication cuts.

We've been doing this for 10 years. Even when it wasn't streaming, we decided we don't need to cover these because most of the time you're going to be watching these on DVD. And now especially, you'll be watching them on Disney Plus. and it retains all the old content. I think I did check my local listings for this research. And at least in the Seattle, Washington area, it's not on regular broadcast TV anymore. And mostly in my area, it's just judge shows, talk shows, and game shows. Things that are cheaper than even licensing like old scripted content.

I have fun memories of like in college and then when Joe and I were living together in New York and working on a documentary. At lunch every day, we'd take our lunch hour and then go in and watch two back-to-back Family Matters episodes because we were a little out of that demographic when it initially aired. So we were watching them for the first time in syndication and eating microwave food. And they would go in order. We basically got to see, I think, and it was probably a sad time in our lives, but we saw the entirety of family matters, even when a kid just didn't come back after the fourth season

and the mom got swapped out in the ninth season. Like, we witnessed it all in order. You saw the rise of Urkel from one-off character to him playing Bruce Lee. Yeah, exactly. I remember watching that. Yeah. It's one of those eras of your life where, like, at the time, it probably wasn't that great, but like, now I look back on it fondly.

Also, we always talk about this, but there was an episode where Urkel, I think the shrink ray that he built accidentally shrunk him and Carl. So they're like going to bed and in a giant cheese sandwich and all the stuff and at the end of the episode they're just still shrunk and we're like they just didn't respect the audience even enough to write themselves out of that so but i think this is a result of syndication though because i remember i was watching that episode and it went to the next family matters episode and they hadn't unshrunk them yet but then i was talking to somebody about and they're like oh no they unshrunk them and i was like now when i was watching it but i was watching on syndication so

maybe syndication was like eh who cares let's just lop that part off that was a crucial cut though they made for syndication. They just left them trunken. That talk about the guys who sold syndicated deals and everything. I couldn't name him because he never told us that. But Bob and I when we had an Airbnb once in Burbank, the owner of it who said

hello unprompted to us, he said he used to be a syndication sales rep for Lorimar. He was saying like, oh, I could tell you stories about some of the parties I had around selling out. Well, he did more than say hello. He interrupted a recording. Yes. That's true.

True. When we were all sitting around microphones in his Airbnb at the big kitchen table. And he just showed up? They're not supposed to just show up. Don't they have to let you know that they're coming over? They can't just like, hey, how's everything going? Popping in here. I think he wanted to make sure a porno wasn't about to break out. Oh, okay. And then he's like, oh, you guys care about a TV history with the Simpsons. You know, I used to sell Alf and, oh, man, when he's like, and you should tell your black friends, I sold fresh prints. Like, he said something like, oh, boy.

You should have grabbed a microphone for this guy invited him to the party. He didn't make any of these shows are right for them. He facilitated the purchase of the shows into syndication. That'll buy you a house in Burbank right across the street from the Warner lot. Yeah, exactly.

He probably made more money than most writers on these shows. The creator of a streaming show like Bojack Horseman made less money than this guy who sold Alf in Cleveland. I remember like, yeah, we got an offer for a TV deal once. After we did the math, we'd make more money like playing Tucson, doing a live show for 200 people than we would having a show on a major cable network.

There's no money in it. I actually had a quote from Don Wells about how much she felt she got screwed by the Gilgans Island deal. She said, our producer made 90 million in reruns of Gilgans Island alone, but we didn't get any of it. And I mentioned that too because a TV show like The Simpsons was not WGA, and I'm not sure it was SAG. So it was a bonanza for the syndication rights because they didn't have to pay residuals to any of these people.

I could see Harry Shear having an issue with that. Yeah, poor Marianne from Gilligan's Island. It's why I think Don Wells was like the holdout for a lot of the Gilligan's Island reunion stuff, I want to say. That does explain why you'd see like a withered, wrinkled Bob Denver on every talk show like still wearing the, he'd be on like the Tempest Bloodsoe daytime talk show wearing like the sailor hat, the red outfit, you'd be like, oh, poor Bob Denver. He's still doing that in his 80s.

Hey, just circling back to your Airbnb host who sold Alf. I would love to hear what his pitch was for Elf. Like when he was in the room with him and he's like, you guys got to buy Elf. Like this is, I just want to hear what his sales pitch. So he's an alien. He crash landed. You know, just like what his salesman guy speak is like. The way he told it to us, it sounded mostly like going to strip clubs.

He literally is like, oh, yeah. The stories I can tell you about strip clubs. Let's close the deal, get some cigars. All right. It's an alien. You crash lands. Let's do this. All right.

Let's get rich. The port house and going to have a T-bone. The kids love this shit. But the other thing is they're getting rich off of those, like I feel like it's like the Wilford Brimley diabetes commercials. You know, like those are the commercials that were on during syndication. Yeah, gold bond medicated powders. Yeah. Those cheap ones that look like they cost like 40 bucks to air or something.

Yeah. But there's so many of them that they just, yeah. It's all commercials for like divorce lawyers and medication and TVBCR repair. Yes, yeah, Sally Struthers. Well, these days it's cash for gold or reverse mortgages. Or the Trump bear. Is that more of a first Trump thing? I feel like the Trump bear ads.

People would still buy those. What's the one with the, oh, inventions, the BC guy with the wheel? Do you got an idea for an invention? I remember I called one of those up one time. because I had an idea for called it the umbuddy umbrella where it's like there's an umbrella and you can share it with a friend because that's always the awkward part of an umbrella right two people have to like scrunch under you don't have to sell me on it each person gets a handle in my umbuddy bralla right so you got a handle and your buddy has an umbrella and you can go underneath the umbrella I sent that to one of those like syndicated TV show commercials like got an idea for an invention and they immediately sent me a certificate saying that I was the inventor of the umbuddy brolla like they got my address and I was like look it I got it I only have to send them 500 bucks now we'll get this thing started so it's sort of like buying a star in the sky yeah your contract yeah like this is where the mr. plow commercial would air in syndication because the people watching it were kids sick home from school alcoholics and the unemployable right and this is how you guys discover things like ads for things that zap your face into beauty you know yep oh yeah the troupenic infomercial or yeah that that paid ad

advertisement would have been on that same block. Yep. The Simpsons was going to join a whole host of syndicated things. Like syndication was doing huge numbers. I was going through the variety archives. And they mentioned the like, starting in 1987, the highest rated syndicated stuff was reruns of sitcoms. Like sitcoms were becoming big, big money by 1987.

The Cosby Show got $4 million an episode. That was a record. Like, that is per episode. So you get 100 episodes I can't do the math on that But that's a lot of money Yeah Bill Oakley was telling us this About their time when they left The Simpsons

And everybody wanted sitcoms Because reality TV was far in the distance They didn't know about it And they just said no we want sitcoms We want to make 100 episodes We want to sell in this indication Pitch us your sitcom we want to make them It was so cheap to produce sitcoms too

I mean they just shoot it all in a studio Right and they can just do it in blocks Like you know carve out three weeks and shoot the entire season And you're done just like that I mean, yeah, I could see why I'd be appealing. Yeah, that's why there were like 85 episodes of things no one is seeing like the Harry and the Henderson sitcom. Yeah.

That's out there somewhere. I was thinking of like Caroline in the City was a show. Nobody's favorite show, but that was out all the time and it must have made quite a bit of money for everybody in the 90s and early 2000. We just got so used to seeing it like that, you know? It's just like, this is what TV is. Yeah. You know the room? And then once they started doing the single camera stuff, I was like, oh, wait, we can actually bring it.

out into the world here. The earliest I could find a reporting on, Will the Simpsons Go into Syndication, was February 1991 in Variety, where like Bart Mania, it's just after the Christmas of Bart Mania, and they're going like, okay, how is this going to be syndicated? And there's a funny question in the piece about like, oh, you know, will the Simpsons last? Can it get to 100 episodes? And here's the quote here. Programming rep, Jack Fentris of Petri National, points out that too much topicality and or fattishness doesn't transfer well into syndication. the Mary Tyler Moore Show seemed dated when it got into syndication. Working Mindy Fizzled like a faulty firecracker and even Alf,

which like The Simpsons, appeal to both adults and kids while in its network run, generally has disappointed in syndication except with kids. So they figured that it was, oh, and also they got a quote from Joe Barbera. He said, comparing it to the Flintstones, the longevity of our series depended on the sincerity of the characters and the identifiability of the storylines. adults related to the family dynamics of the show and the visual gimmicks. It wasn't trying to be topical per se.

Well, explain Anne Margroch to me then. Added Barbara, it's a living. I mean, that should be at the end of every quote he makes. Yeah, it seemed that internally, once The Simpsons was a big hit in season one, Fox really wanted to get that at syndication finish line before the fad had ended because we heard from writers and producers that initially Fox wanted four clip shows per season. And thankfully, thanks to their deal with James L. Brooks, they push back against that. And then for a while, there was one per season until they stopped doing that entirely.

In the math, again, this is why clip shows existed in so many old shows and why you'd be annoyed if you saw them in reruns. Because say you're selling the Cosby Show episode for $4 million, if you do a clip show that has only like three minutes of new content, it will cost much less to produce. But you're getting $4 million per airing no matter what. it costs to make. Interesting. I just watched an Alf clip show. And when you say clip show, you mean like the one where they're like, oh, remember when that happened?

Yeah. That kind of episode, they're stuck in the freezer kind of a thing. Elf gets amnesia kind of thing. Like, let's remember. Yeah, okay. Yeah. You're watching an Alf clip show. It might have been written by Mike Reese and El Jean.

Oh, I didn't check the credits on that. But, yeah, it was the one with Wayne Schlegel. It was the one where he thinks he's an insurance salesman. Right. That's the first season Alph Clip show. I swear we talked about this next. when you were last on too. I'm sure we did. Yeah, I'm sure it always seems to come up. Another reason Fox was being so gung-ho about this was they thought that it would let them get around a certain rule that would let them air the Simpsons between seven and eight. Because if you wonder why in some markets, and this rule kind of went away in 96, why is it that only Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune or extra or whatever is on between seven and eight? It used to be legally in the U.S. you could not air a sitcom or something that had been.

like a rerun of a sitcom between 7 and 8. But they wondered if the Simpsons being a cartoon show on a mini network, if it could get around that. What's the reason for that law? I don't understand what it could possibly be. It's called the primetime access rule. And I believe it had the reason was the FCC felt that if you were showing broadcast level quality right before primetime started at 8,

that it would somehow like detract or confuse viewers, I want to say. they wouldn't know when syndication started in their prime time But who cares? If they like the show, then they'd like the show. Like, I still don't get it. I think they were overthinking it. But I do remember on commentaries, they would talk about the battles they would have with the FCC

to allow certain content. This was Fox was airing it at 8 p.m. on Sundays. And then the same racy content would then be airing after school for kids at 3 p.m. in that same episode. And I do remember Married with Children, a show I was allowed to watch, probably shouldn't have been, aired at 9.30 on Sunday nights. And then it was on like literally after school every day when it entered syndication.

I don't think they cut any content from those episodes either. An important thing to know with the Simpsons cut stuff, they would censor stuff internationally, but they never made content cuts for U.S. syndication. It was only for time purposes, yeah. Okay, okay. But the reason The Simpsons did so well in syndication is because it's so, I mean, it's just so evergreen. It's mostly evergreen. In my niece and nephew, I told you last time I was on,

They started watching it a couple years ago. They're 10 and 12 now. But man, every time I go in, I go to their house, it's on the TV. They're strictly already at 10 and 12. They are just Golden Age Simpsons. They're the first 10 seasons. And I don't know if my brother trained them to be that way or what. But yeah, it's so evergreen.

Very rarely do you stumble on an episode where it's like, oh, that's kind of a data joke. I think the only one that comes to mind is the Ken Star. I'm sure they have to explain Crystal Pepsi to the kids. They wouldn't understand that. Right, right. Yeah. Another thing that came up with Simpson syndication was in late 1992, when Tracy Olin was suing to try to get a piece of the Simpsons, as honestly I kind of side with her. And I'm not even like, oh, Tracy Olin deserves money from the Simpsons. Like, eh. But it is a spinoff of her show. It debuted on her show and then became its own show. But a reason she sued was because she could see the syndication money was coming. And that's like literally hundreds of millions of dollars. I would sue over the chance to get a. $100 million. For sure.

And I agree with you. I think she absolutely should. Like, she put them on the map. She was there from day one. So, yeah. I mean, the worst that they said about her was that, like, she didn't like it being on the show. Multiple writers on the show were like, oh, she hated that the Simpsons was on and got bigger laughs than them.

That has been alleged about her. But still. It's like when the Muppets were on SNL. I'm sure it's like, hey, you're taking away from our live, you know, comedy time. Yeah. I think it's also because they had to steal performers, too. needed Dan and Julie to record lines while they had to rehearse and do other things for the Tracy Ellman show. Yeah.

Oh, Joe, we don't want to keep you any later. Yeah, I got to hop off here. Thanks for noticing because I wasn't watching. No, I could talk to you guys all day long. Yeah, thanks for having me. People who are listening come out and see us live at Found Footage Festival. FoundFutageFest.com has all of our tour dates. So thanks, thanks, fellas.

Thanks, thank you. Thanks, thank you. Hey, it's Andrew Gilbert saying this week's syndication discussion has closed captioning brought to you by, just kidding. But our guests are awesome and they're brought to you by Found Footage Fest. Yes, thanks again to Nick and Joe from Found Footage Fest for coming by. They're on tour. Check out all the cool tour dates that they are doing. They're probably coming to your town or maybe just came through.

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patreon.com slash talking Simpson. Well, we got rid of that dead weight. I'm still here. Oh, no. And yes, I was trying to look up like how much money did the Simpsons make in syndication. Joe mentioned it earlier about that book, Stupid TV, be more funny. I actually asked Alan Siegel if much came up. for him. And he couldn't find anything more on it than the 1.5 million amount that was in headlines around like 1993 that like, oh, we think we'll get in the 1.5 million or even 2 million range. So there was no, I'm saying in 94, it obviously grew over time over the years. But that's the best I could get from our pal Allen as well. And that's what Variety was thinking back in late 1993. And the deal,

Although, so it was talked about for a while, they're like, will we do it in 100 episodes or will we do it, you know, with just 60 or something? I think it was by the end of season two, they're like, oh, this will make it to 100. We'll stick to the 100 plan. And so December 7th, 1992 is when Variety has Fox Indication Wing, 20th television has sold animated hit The Simpsons to the Fox own and operated TV stations, essentially transferring money from one part of the company to another. the Simpsons OffNet will premiere during fall 1994. Now when I described that, that sounds like it should be illegal, right? Yes.

It is somehow not. I don't know how, again, I guess I could just say, well, Ronald Reagan and then his vice president were president, and they deregulated many things. Like, that's the easy answer in most of these cases. Well, we have talked about this, Henry. This is related. But every showrunner after season four assumed that they were running. the last seasons of the Simpsons.

David Merkin, Oakley, and Weinstein, and Mike Scully. And then once we get to the 2000s, we realize, oh, this is never going to end. But it did feel like with season five, Fox was like, let's just give the show to David Murchin, his last show, Phil, but he's a reliable showrunner, slot him in, fill the staff that departed, and we'll just get this machine to 100 and then see what happens after this. I feel like maybe internally Fox realized, well, the show is not hot anymore. And then we hear from Bill Oakley on our live show where we think the Simpsons is a big hit, because we love it, but actually, it's not doing very well in the late 90s when Oakley and Weinstein are in charge.

The bloom is off the rows. People are going elsewhere. But the people who started watching from the beginning, they are the core audience. And it's mostly kids, honestly. They're getting killed in the demos, getting killed by Matt Locke and Matt About You, which was driving Bill Oakley crazy in particular. That's wild because it wasn't that long after the show premiered, right? I mean, like 90 and then by the late 90s, I guess the Simpsons run. And for most shows, that's towards the end of a run of a good show. But for this one, it's still in its infancy. I mean, I think like seasons nine and ten are like really good.

You know, that timing of that variety piece being December 7th and 92, I believe it was a year. No, yeah, it was December 92 as well when it was confirmed that David Merkin was going to be the showrunner for season five. I'm now wondering if that was the reasoning for the timing because the Fox had to decide, do we renew it for a fifth season to get to 100? Or do we syndicate with just like 80-ish? 80, like I think, I believe by the end of season four, if you're counting production season four, I think it takes them to 82, I want to say. Yeah, in terms of ratings, I just, I look this up now because I was curious. By the time David Merkin is running the show in season five, I just looked up to see, what did Rosebud get in the ratings? Well, it got more than any show would

ever get today, obviously, but the standards were different then. But Rosebud was the 33rd highest ranked show on TV, which is not great. This was not an ER. This was not even like a home improvement or a Roseanne. I think in season two with Barkins-N-F, it did rise into the top three. And I think even in season one, it was getting in the top three way back in the day. But those were the peak years. And now it was just a reliable show on Fox. Again, like this Rosebud episode got 12 million viewers, which any network would murder for now. They would wipe out an entire nation if they could get one episode that many viewers, but standards much different in 1993. And those kind of numbers also would indicate that like, oh, well, this isn't going to be a big hit in syndication. Like

Roseanne, the Cosby show, those type of shows when they entered syndication or home improvement or Seinfeld after the Simpsons. When those entered syndication, there wasn't an expectation like, well, these are in like top 10 shows on prime time. Of course these are going to get a bunch of money. But the Simpsons, not so. Like, it was a cult hit, was becoming a, a cult hit with nerds. But I would think if you're selling it, you're like, well, yeah, this was like multiple articles. We're like, oh, this is like Al Fry, a thing that kids liked for a little bit. And then the fad was over. And we were able to sell reruns of the old fad show for some money. It's funny to think about that, too, because now I feel like adult skewing cartoons

are, at least towards the end of the syndication heyday, were the main bread and butter because they were so, you know, the actors didn't get older. They didn't have other commitments. It was easier to record so they could go longer and like I dated somebody who would like fall asleep to Bob's burgers where it's just like a good thing to have on in the background and like while you're eating a snack or while you're you know in between homework or well you know it's just like an animated show that's smart I think it's just like comforting at least the Simpsons was comforting so to have that hour long block every day I just took it to another level yeah sorry I just had one more number to throw out not to believe everybody with numbers but by

the beginning of season 8, the season premiere, you only move twice, that was number 50 in the rating. So this really shows that we love The Simpsons, but it was broadly losing appeal with the mainstream. And that's the season premiere, which you would think is more heavily promoted than your average episode, too, right?

Yes, I was there. I was one of the people that push it up to number 50 in the rankings. Everybody was more excited for Matt about you. They're like, we got to see what Murray the dog is up to this. My supposition about every TV show growing up that I loved was that it would get canceled because I just remember like police squad loving that show and they didn't even air the last

two episodes of it and then it became naked gun you know years later or there's another like parody show called sledgehammer I don't know if you remember that one but that was another like funny like cop show parody I loved and then even when Seinfeld came on that first season I'm like this is way too specific it's going to get canceled like my dad and I loved it but there's no way this is going to last And then even Simpsons like was, it felt like the cult thing to watch this sketch comedy show on a new network, right? Tracy Olin. And then like you'd see these goofy shorts that were a little, you know, violent with people being electrocuted and being like, oh, this is just something that me and my friends like, but it's never going to. So just to see that sort of take off was mind blowing. And when it went back to being cult, I was kind of like, ah, this is where it should live.

As long as it stays on the air, it's all right. If it's too popular, you're like, oh, I don't know. Maybe it's not cool. Yeah, I don't even think about shows getting canceled anymore because if a show comes out, it's a streaming show. There are six episodes. So if it's canceled, it doesn't matter. It barely existed to begin with.

Yeah, it's not the same. Yeah, I could never find any Simpsons person complaining publicly, or at least like an executive or anything, complaining publicly about this, basically insider trading, because Fox selling to Fox is basically, it's paying themselves and moving, money around. And also, if they're not offering it to other competing networks, then they also might be getting it for less than they could charge because they are selling it to themselves. But I do think it's because the Simpsons people have no residuals tied up into it anyway.

They're like, well, what would I complain? Either way, I make zero. But meanwhile, in 1999, David Dukubney sued Fox over this exact same thing about X-Files syndication. He was like, you sold X-Files to other Fox networks and got this for way less than you would have and you screwed me out of millions of dollars. So did Chris Carter sue a few years later and they just settled with him. And Stephen Bocchko, he sued Fox because they sold the NYPD Blue Rights to cable to themselves and that he's like, hey, you owe me $50 million. You can't just sell to yourself. This is just telling me we need a sister company, Henry. We have to license what a cartoon to talking Simpsons for a million dollars each and of course but we need to get it tax free as well.

Let's sell me to ourselves. It is so funny though that like how much of syndication is still like insider trading, backroom deals like, you know, syndication isn't what it once was. But like up until fairly recently, I guess till the, you know, streaming took over everything, it does feel like it was still a little shady and kind of underhanded. Unlike the streaming deals of today, which are incredibly above board and everything's fine. But back then, they would make enough episodes, again, to last 13 weeks of nonstop weekday programming. Now it's like a six episode season or an eight episode season or we bought one season and we cut it in half. 40 years ago, they would just make 65 episodes of a Rambo cartoon and just fill a quarter of a year with that on the schedule.

That's the wildest thing because we do this like show called Shatterday Morning cartoons. You both have been on where we're going through seasons of forgotten cartoons. look at it and you'll be like, the Punky Brewster cartoon had 80 episodes or whatever it is. And yeah, I think it was that thing where it was just all one order. It'll be like two seasons, 68 episodes. You're like, wait a minute, what were the seasons? Now it all makes sense. I didn't realize that.

Yeah, like Police Academy had a cartoon. It was on one year, 65 episodes. That was it. No one ever saw it after that. And the thing about that one, too, is they have the guy who makes the sound effects that was, you know, Michael Winslow in the movies where it was this impressive thing. He sounds like a helicopter or a police siren. And there they just dub in the police siren and the helicopter and have his lips move.

So it completely defeats the purpose of that character. Is that good? And we were talking about the cuts. In my research and variety, I found out another reason the cuts happened, not just to fit in the format of your local news channel ads and all that on broadcast, but also because Fox made direct money from it. This is from an August 93 variety piece on it saying like, for example, 20th TV, in addition to collecting license fee money from the stations, keeps two minutes in each half hour of Dugie Hauser and one minute in each episode of The Simpsons, both of which are available in the fall of 94 for licensing. So that would mean that not only do the local channels on broadcast, they license the Simpsons, then they sell ads within that, but also one minute of the Simpsons.

an entire minute is just Fox gets to sell the ads themselves and be like, no, this is our ad and we sell it for extra money. So that's why a whole other minute of Simpsons has to go away from each episode to fit in that ad. It's also why they didn't just make cuts. They also sped up episode. The Simpsons archive has a perfect list of these fan sourced ones and time codes. And they just mentioned like, well, only 20 seconds got cut comparatively, but it's a minute shorter. And that's just because, like, they sped it up by, like, five or ten percent to just have an episode. How did they speed it up?

Like, wouldn't the voices be higher? It's so imperceptible because they just, they speed up a 22-minute episode by such a small degree that buys them time, but it also, you really can't tell unless you can see, like, the artifacts of what it looks like when you're speeding video up in that way. And even internally, they would do it with first-run shows. Like, I do remember who shot Mr. Burns was part two, was so long. they had to run it through what they called the speed up machine. Did they say the term in that one,

we 10%ed it or something? Something like that. Yeah. But now I feel like that's probably done across the board with every show made before like 2010. That airs on TV now. That has to fit the 30 minute programming block for all of the ads, for sure.

Yeah. To say nothing of aspect ratios for a show like the Simpsons pre, 2007 or 8 not being respected. There's your answer when the, this is how much money Fox got to make off of it. Not only did they sell per episode airings of 100 episodes at at least 1.5 million, but they also got to sell their own ads within each episode to advertise, like to make the money themselves. And they're not paying residuals to writers, animators, or I think actors. So pretty good deal for old Fox there.

And The Simpsons would launch. And you know what? Not only was it five days a week. Originally, I think they only went to two episodes a night during the second. I want to say based on old ads I found, but they not only had a deal for a five-night a week, but some networks also got it for Saturdays. It did air in Saturdays in some markets. I don't remember having Saturday Simpsons. Do you guys recall it in your neighborhood? I think very briefly we had Saturday Simpsons, but that was the one time I wasn't watching the show.

That was the one day you had off to regroup for Sunday's new episode. Yeah, Monday through Friday. That was the big innovation, I remember. And you know what? This also made me think about something happened over the summer as the Simpsons are gearing up to start back up for the next season. I have a clip of it right here. On Sunday, August 7th, the Simpsons are moving. We're all going to Hawaii. Gotcha. America's favorite family is heading back to Sunday.

Right where it all began. Are we there yet? No. Are we there yet? No! Catch the Simpsons on a new night, Sundays at 8-7 Central, beginning. August 7. Wow, thank you, Henry.

I forgot that was another big part of this era of the show. We've talked about this. We covered it on Barkets and F. But the network moved it to Thursdays to compete with the Cosby show. When the Cosby show was a juggernaut, and there was this feud in quotes between Bill Cosby and the Simpsons, it eventually beat the Cosby show a rerun of it. And I think they realized we proved our point.

But on that commentary, James L. Brooks is just lamenting, we could have remained the biggest show on television, if they just kept us on Sundays. And I think it's true. If you look at their Sunday ratings compared to what happened when the show moved to Thursdays, it's a sharp decline.

Even though Bark Kitsen-F was the most watch episode of all time, you can see that people are leaving the show because they're used to it being a Sunday night institution, only a few months in. They built a good thing with Sunday nights and built a programming block around it. And yeah, I mean, as a family, we would have to decide whether to watch Cosby or The Simpsons

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helps you turn ideas into reality. And help adds up. Fundraisers you start for someone else, raise up to five times more. So think right now. Who could use your help? Change rarely comes from waiting. It comes from someone deciding, today I'll start. Don't wait for someone else to bring change. Today, start your fundraiser in just minutes at gofundme.com. That's gofundme.com to start your fundraiser. Gofundme.com. This is a commercial. message brought to you by GoFundMe. Now from this aspect, I think before I always just figured, oh, yeah, they defeated Cosby. Well, I mean, Cosby's over, so they're not competing with that anymore.

And now they want to open up Thursday and make it like Martin became the anchor show of Thursday night, not the Simpsons. But now I also think it maybe was that the Simpsons were licensed to be on weekdays and Saturdays. Sunday was the one time syndicated Simpsons could air. So maybe there was a feeling of like put new Simpsons on. Sunday, we'll train audiences for seven days a week of Simpsons. But if it's on Thursday, then we're almost competing with ourselves with the weekday airings. So how is it rolled out in the fall of 1994 after all of that? Well, one thing that Fox Broadcasting did was they spent big money on two ads that, fortunately, listeners, I hope you're okay with things that sound like they were

taken off of VHS and uploaded to YouTube, because that's a lot of the clips I have from this. but two of them did survive on the season four Simpsons DVDs and that's Unforgettable Classics and Compulsion Do you guys remember these? Like, because they're animated on like the one. Yeah, I believe one of them involves editing the Simpsons

into famous movie clips, right? Yes, yeah, here. Let's give a listen to Unforgettable Classics. They're the moments we'll always remember. You're all clear, kid, now let's blow this thing and go home. No problem, oh man. I can't swim! What, are you crazy?

The fall will probably kill you. Good point. Americans love an underachiever. Watch the epic grandeur of an unforgettable classic. Or watch The Simpsons. I kept in that little bit at the end there because Watch the Simpsons is formatted to leave open space at the bottom and then there's silence because it's supposed to leave space for at 730 and your local listing. That's what it's for. Was the compulsion one the obsession parody?

Let's give a listen to that too. She knew the signs, but didn't think to read them. He knew she was aware of her own unawareness. Then, a fleeting glimpse, and she realized, for every idiot, there is a compulsion. Woo-hoo! Nothing like a good belly flap. Oh, Homer. Newvo post-modern comedy for the masses, The Simpsons.

Well, Calvin Klein, taken down a page. I forgot about that one until you mentioned it. But yeah, now I can see it in my head. And were those produced by the syndicators or? I'm thinking it was 20th television. They made it and clearly hired at least some of the voice actors to do original voice acting for it. I think we can all tell that Hank Azaria not invited. Harry Shearer probably said no.

Like the commercials, these have the best animation you'll ever see from the sim. in terms of the fluidity of everything. Now, watching them both back to back, I wonder if they both are formatted with some live action in them. I do wonder if they were partially done because, well, one, it looks fancy to have like animation live action mashups, but two, it maybe is their way of saying, this isn't just a cartoon.

Don't, adults, watch this too. This isn't a cartoon show. I'm sure. Yeah. It could be. And there's so many other ads for when it launched that I have here. though one of my favorites I found, thanks to it being uploaded by the Paul and Walt Worldwide, who made it, because it won the Mercury Award for Radio Humor that year.

But when they launched it, they did a radio ad with Robert Goulet. And now, Mr. Robert Goulet reads from The Writings of Bart, the collected after-school blackboard writings of young Bart Simpson, Mr. Goulet. I will not trade pants. others. I will not do that thing with my tongue. I will not Xerox my butt. A burp is not an answer. I will not pledge allegiance to Bart. I will not eat things for money. I will not bring sheep to class. I will not instigate revolution. My name is not Dr. Death. To a experience all of Bart's blackboard writings.

Watch every classic episode of The Simpsons. I will not call the principal Spudhead. The Simpsons. Now five times a week. Award winning that ad there. I hadn't heard that one, but that's pretty good. And I like Goulet. I mean, I still quote, Vera said that.

So to see him again in the Simpsons context. Pretty great. They did find somebody who will be in one of the original run of syndicated episodes to do it. So it's almost like it's official. Another ad I found is one of my favorites that it's for the launch of the Simpsons in syndication. So it's for like September 19th. But it is made directly for children.

It is about how like how do you sell it to children without literally saying to children. And the way they get away with it is they start with a crusty clip. In this clip here, it's not the voiceover narrator saying it's crusty. Hey, kids. Bart Simpson will no longer be seen once a week. Now he'll be seen five days a week. Now's a chance to be bad. Bart, are you pulling up the carpet?

He's the boy you love to hate. Stuff yourself with more bark than you can stand with the Simpsons all week long. Simpsons tonight at 7.30 p.m. on Fox 5. There we go. it sounds like they're trying to start a second wave of Bartmania like get your t-shirts out of the closet everybody he's back it's like kids you love him like it's so

I love they it's so smart they started with a clip of Krusty saying hey kids like if they wanted to plead ignorance they're like that was just a clip from the show we didn't literally have the announcer say kids this is for you I have to credit I think Joe is the one who came up with this but we have this like thing we call him

Hey Jerry and that's when We call them, you got that right, Jerry's. And what that is is when there's a promo where they always, it seems like the clip is interacting with the narrator. So it's like, the Seinfeld is on five days a week. You got that right, Jerry. And that's Kramer saying that as if. And so many promos, it's the laziest format.

But it's like they try to act like they're having a conversation. So it's like, The Simpsons is airing five days a week. I caramba, you know, it's like that whole format. And you still see. people doing that with promos today. I guess some PA has to crawl through every episode to find clips that could convincingly be talking to a announcer. That's what I always think. There weren't like databases probably back then or like

transcripts to really search through. So yeah, you had to do it the hard way. Tangentially related, I heard funny man, John Gabris, he's great. He had a funny story I heard that when he worked at VH1 as an intern, he worked on some of those like I love the whatevers. And they, he mentioned that legal they could show anything that was from a music video. So that was like their stock footage. Like, well, if like ants appeared in a music video. But you had to know what it was.

And he said there was just one guy who worked at VH1 slash MTV who just had a photographic memory of every single music video. And so they would just ask him like, do you remember one where like somebody milks a cow? And he's like, oh, yeah, this music video, that music video. And like that was their stock footage system. Yeah, I have a friend like that. Who's that guy for music videos and any like music question? You know, I used to just call him or text him if we had an argument at a bar or something.

But it's so weird now that you can just look that up pretty easily and get a definitive answer. Fortunately, Google AI is making him more useful. You're your friend. Yeah, right. They're adjusting his knowledge. Yeah, we are those people for others who have questions about The Simpsons, except podcasters don't have friends. Right. Yeah.

So we are useless. It was a moment of pride for me. Bob, when we were at the Simpsons Halloween trivia night in Portland with Bill Oakley. And somebody asked Bill Oakley a question of like, why does Homer's shoes look different in this scene from Lisa the Greek? I think it was. And then Bill's like, you should ask them. And we instantly had an answer.

Yes. It was because they reused footage from Dog of Death. Everybody knows this. I have one for how they promoted Saturdays versus the Sundays. And this is the first one. You're going to hear the clip of the. usual voice for the Simpsons syndication package, because I think they basically recorded these in a big pile of them. Unfortunately, he's no longer on Twitter, but that guy, 3002,

Simpsons historian himself, he actually bought for like hundreds of dollars the package you get if you were a syndicator of like, here's every like cassette tape of the ads for every episode you're getting. And I want to say this is the voice artist Brian Cummings, but I could not find this confirmed, but here's the first time we'll hear his voice here as the, He promotes Saturday reruns of Simpsons. Weekends are a time to relax. Well, here we are. To reflect.

Cool, man. To sample the arts. How does he do it, Smithers? He's a love machine, sir. Well, all that is changing because your favorite neighbors are dropping by. Sometimes I think we're the worst family in town. Medellation moves to a larger community. Don't!

No, Simpsons. Your weekends will never be the same. Coming September 24th to Saturday nights at 6th. Now, Henry, this announcer actually is Joe Leahy because he was the announcer on Freakazoid and they turned him into a character. Okay, thank you, Bob. The internet told me Brian Cummings,

but yeah, you're right. It's definitely Joe Leahy. How can I forget the regular recurring character on Freakazoid? I was hoping Freakazoid would come up in today's episode. You guys had the answer. It's a guarantee either Freakazoid or Duckman will make an appearance on Talking Simpson. If we go long enough, maybe Bonkers will make an appearance too.

We'll see where the day takes. Let's hope. I do think in my market, we watch Bonkers at 4.30 and then Simpsons at 5. It's a hell of a block. I swear in my area, at some point, five to six became the hour of Simpsons. And it usually was like your bridge into sitcom town from afternoon cartoons. It was that way in Madison, Wisconsin, where I grew up, when I'd go back. Like, I was in college when syndication started.

but when I'd go back to my hometown and yeah, it was on five to six before, I think there's Wheel of Fortune and then Jeopardy and then that's when sitcom started. So I'd usually like, yeah, watch Simpsons, then make myself something to eat while my parents watched Jeopardy and then it was sitcom time.

As we're playing old ads here, Nick, you mentioned theme weeks. It's true. They had many theme weeks. I think after the first year, I think the first year didn't have theme weeks, but by 95 they did. I've got four of them here. I'm sure listeners can also just see the episodes. They're bringing up as they mentioned them.

It's Shriek Week on the Simpsons. I sell my soul for a donut. Don't watch it alone. All this week at 7 on Fox 5. Arrow Smith, the red hot chili peppers, spinal dab, and sting. Let's rock. Rockstar week on The Simpsons. Week nights at 6, Sunday at 8 on Fox.

It's your favorite stars from Classic TV. Colonel Clegg! Homer! Classic TV week on The Simpsons. Tonight at 7.30 p.m. on Fox 5. Want to mastermind some mayhem? Go on, sucker. Then take a lesson from Bart Simpson, the Doctor of Destruction.

Hey, Bruce! Catch a week of Bart's best praise. It's poetry in commotion. Sucker. All this week at 7 on Fox 5. So Henry, a question for you. You put together the information for this podcast. And I'm just curious about the episode selection. Who mandated this? Was there a mandate? Because some people will say, oh, they always aired this one in my area. And I'm wondering if these were local programmers choosing which episodes or if there was a schedule they had to follow. And then I was doing my own research. And it seems like there were two waves of syndication. The first one ended in like 99 and the second one picked up the same year. And these are like different packages. And I think it feels like the Joe Leahy. announcer is part of the second wave of syndication. I associate him with like watching reruns in the early odds. The Leahy ones are on some of the 94 ones though, or at least their recordings

that are marked to 94. He stayed very employed, I think. But yes, at the very least in the first like two years, according to the Simpsons archive, and I checked a couple of these against a few saved TV guides that are online. I think in some markets it was dictated what episode would air and they all were supposed to match. Like the first. first episode, according to the Simpsons Archive and the TV guide I found for September 19th, all five episodes that week match with what the Simpson Archive said. And the first episode was, there's no disgrace like home. That was the very first one. But I think it loosened up a little, though also it could be the Wild West back then and broadcasters go like, well, that's what you say I'm

supposed to air, but we're going to air this one or that one. But I think legally or also, a part of your deal was, you can't just air the same episode like eight times. You get a per airing deal as part of it too. It does seem like there's a mysterious governing body, though, at play. Because you always heard about like the World Trade Center episode got pulled from syndication. Like was that 20th century Fox doing pulling that? Or like who manages the syndication? I think it was 20th TV making calls like that.

Yeah, yeah. I think so. Those theme weeks, especially those don't have the same announcer for most of them. and that for the treehouse, for example, they could only do a five day, shriek week, once a fifth treehouse was part of the package, which would have been after the first package because Treehouse five was after the 100th episode, of course.

And there's no disgrace like home being the first one. I think that's a mix of, it's hard to remember this, but one of the most famous first Simpson scenes was them all shocking each other at Dr. Marvin-Marrow's office. Yeah, although around this time, I was starting to really get into this era of the Simpsons, of course, and David Merkin's vibe. And then whenever a season one episode of appearance indication, I would go,

oh, man, well, I guess I have to watch us. Now I appreciate those, but the tone is so different if you're seeing a rerun of Rosebud next to a rerun of Homer's Odyssey. Also, apparently, the Simpsons Archive, they said that there's no deleted scenes from there's no disgrace like home. It's like the only one they didn't cut stuff from. So I'm wondering if that was also why they wanted it to be the first one, because it's the one that matched people's memories maybe.

That I'm not sure on, though. If we are to believe the Simpsons Archives listing of what episodes aired, the second one that aired was Flaming Moes in syndication. And so the first deleted scene was the eye on Springfield this theme. They cut the whole thing and just started straight from Kent Brockman. That's a shame, but it's a real easy cut to make. Yeah, but I love that intro. That hurts.

Oh, but on the theme week, my favorite was the classic TV week, because, like, you couldn't see it, listener, but they show Adam West and Leonard Nimoy and Ernest Borg-9, but the one they have, like the one audio clip they have is Colonel Kling. Yeah, kids love Colonel Kling. Also, when it came to celebrities, how did they advertise them, especially when in a couple cases they weren't allowed to say who the guest star was. Well, I have a few clips of that, too.

Springfield softball team is losing. Until Mr. Burns brings in ringers. A new security guard. Roger Clemon. Hello. Now, Homer's desperate to play with the pros. Did I make the team? You sure did.

I did. Whoa! In your face, strawberry! Wait a minute. Are you Ken Griffey Jr.? No. Will he be in the lineup? My magic bat.

And I got an enchanted jockstrap. Or Willie strikeout. Ah! The Simpsons. The Simpsons Hour, tonight, starting at 7, 6th Central. They were the biggest barbershop quartet ever. Go number one. Dead!

Until the harmonies faded. Barney! Could a rock superstar save the man? Hello, Homer. I'm George Harrison. Oh my God, where did you get that brownie? The Simpsons. Tonight at 7.30 on Fox 25. It's an all-star salute to Krusty the Clown featuring Johnny Carson, Elizabeth Taylor, and Matt Midler, The Simpsons.

Tonight at 7.30 on Fox 11. Homer's in the Nut House with someone famous. Billy Jeans, not my lover. The Simpsons. Sunday after 5. That was a very knowing the Simpsons. Oh, boy, I would have loved to have this gig. I wonder if the person was a fan, the gig of, okay, you have to cut a 15-second promo for every Simpsons,

find the best joke, and then write the best succinct summary of what's going on here. Yeah, no, that's what I was going to say is that job. I mean, I have a friend who currently, like, cuts things for MTV and has that job of, like, pulling the best 15-second moment from that and cutting it into a promo. I remember one for The Simpsons, I think it was for the syndication, where it was just all Homer saying, dough, you know, different versions of dough. And, like, that was before there were, like, internet compilations where you could to see every, you know, sacrilegious. And, you know, like, there really weren't people doing mashups like that yet. So to see it, even as, like, a promo for a syndicated episode, was pretty special.

Yeah, it took a lot more work, for sure. These are people who are having to edit on BHS, I would assume, also. Yeah. Those clips were I tried to find all of the Stark Raving Dad ones that I could. And that was the funniest one to me. But they all go like, Homer thinks he's with somebody famous. And then they just play him. There's another one where they just play.

It's like, I'm Michael Jackson. Like just to, because legally they can't say this episode has Michael Jackson in it thanks to the deals they made. Though the Barbershop Quartet one is also great. It's like things fell apart when Barney started belching and then maybe George Harrison helped them out, apparently from that ad. or who they chose to advertise and Krusty gets canceled. Like, it's Elizabeth Taylor, Bet Midler, and Johnny Carson. Like, no red hot chili peppers mentioned in there? You think they get a reference.

And then I discovered one really funny ad. I like that because when the Simpsons first debuted, I was seeing in multiple markets it was getting like put next to Coach. It was Coach reruns were on like five different channels I found for the 94 ads. But by 95, a new show entered syndication. And there's an official ad. advertising them both, despite the fact that they were not owned by the same company at the time. Tim Taylor and Homer Simpson separated at birth, both had three loving children, away with words, and great physique.

Look at that. Blumber fly. And both at their own TV show. Tim and Homer separated at birth. Now back to back. The fun kicks off with a new episode of Home Improvement Monday at 7 on Box 11. You have to suffer through Home Improvement first. They kind of tried to mix the dough with the, uh,

caveman sound that he would make. Yeah. Also, it's like they're on TV, but it's like, but no, Homer doesn't, he's,

he's not on TV. Well, I guess in some episodes Homer is, but they're not both TV show hosts. But yeah, it was just so crazy. It's like, who made the deal?

The 20th television have syndication rights to home improvement? Because that is an official ad with, that's Joe Leahy. This wasn't a local ad for it. Like, this was one provided by the syndicator, I would assume. Also, when it said a new episode,

Home Improvement did have the gutsy move of like they held one episode that would premiere new in syndication to like help launch the syndication. I remember that was a big deal for me of like, wait, I think it's the one where Tim, Tim is in a tank for some reason. That's all I remember about it. One last bit from my Simpsons commercials clip package here is one thing I noticed, and there's many great ones saved by many great people on YouTube, too many users to list. but one thing I noticed was that the edge usually were at a male demographic and they would be about the fun crazy things Homer or Bart do in an episode. And I found five ads for episodes that were Lisa-centric episodes, but you can hear how that they were promoted to incindication here.

Prepare for Operation Bart. Man, I could really go for a hot dog. The Simpsons Monday at 5 on Fox. That was round Springfield right there. That was the one they advertised. The episode where Homer wants a hot dog, great. Let's keep going here. It's the future and Lisa's British boyfriend beats the family.

Driving on the left makes you feel more at home, are you? The Simpsons. Watch Monday at 7 on Fox 25. Take a vacation with the Simpsons. No tide, boy. The Simpsons, tonight at 6.30 on Fox 5. When Homer and Lisa gamble, Marge calls off the bench. Gambling is illegal.

Oh, only at 48 states. The Simpsons is our Monday starting at 7th, 6th Central. Who competing announcers? Yeah, that was a weird one. When Lisa gets lost. Lisa? Dad! Homer looked high and low.

The Simpsons. Tonight at 6.30, 5.30 Central. All of them are like, what did Homer do in that episode? Was it the one for Summer of Forfeit? where it's low tide. That's the one where... That's a Lisa on vacation making new friends episode, right? They don't even mention her in the promo at all.

It's just Bard and Homer and Millhouse. Millhouse gets more promotion in the 10-second ad for Lisa's big episode. And a very heartfelt one too, but yeah, it's just like, it's summer with the Simpsons, low-tied boys, roo. I have to admit, I was probably part of the problem because, like, in retrospect, as an older person, the Lisa episodes are generally, a cut above, but at the time I was like, no, I would show up more Homer. And so, yeah, they must have known something.

I don't think I would not watch a lease episode, but I did have Bob, the same reaction Bob had of like, oh, a season one, one, oh, well, you know, that kind of just, it was a resignation more than skipping it. Yeah, I would think, oh, it's still the Simpsons, even if it's season one. When the Simpsons launched in syndication on September 19th, if you were lucky enough to work at a broadcast network or have $10. to spend on eBay, you would get sent the promotional package for the syndication launch I have right here.

Henry is holding in his hands and only $10, Henry. Really? Yes, very cheap. That's why nobody had scanned and uploaded this online. So I suppose I probably should just to share it with folks. But yes, it is a black folder with a sticker on it. This is the Simpsons family like sticker of kind of cheap. But it does have the Fox 20th TV copyright on the back here.

so you know it's an official folder. Insighted here are several things, but first off is a press release about the launch here, which talks up how it's like, oh, the biggest thing 20th television has ever done, and we're in 140 markets, and this won two Emmys. It's big, big talk about the money.

And then they also have a fake news piece that they're like, hey, you could put this in a newspaper if you want. Oh, it's just cash cowabunga, like it's a newspaper headline. Good try, guys. Cash Cowabunga. Is that for you to put it in the flyer at your local TV syndication festival or something? Yeah, I think it's fun ad copy. It has to be, I wonder if this did get like just published in trade papers too, I wonder. Yes, it was a cash cowbunga. As it makes its off-net debut, the aggressively sold show promises to join syndication's financial elite.

Ooh. And also included in it is a fun like 8 by 10 of the whole family, a gloss. 8 by 10 if you can see the gloss on it. Oh nice. It is glossy. Also in it along with that, they mention how here's what they spot lit when talking about like, oh, do you remember the Simpsons history? They talk about how the Bush family really hated the Simpsons. Like they say, like, oh, and it made headlines with Barbara Bush, wrote Marge a letter, like that kind of thing. So a large portion of this folder is, remember the Simpsons? Yes. This show that debuted five years ago. And they even bring up two bits of news, like one we did mention on the

Homer at the bat about the Ross Benezier, the brother who saved his younger brother with the Heimlich maneuver he learned from that episode. That's in their press release. As is the Greenwood South Carolina school that changed their name to Springfield Elementary School because the kids voted on it and the parents and teachers did not know the kids were making a Simpsons reference. Then they have bios of the whole family. I have a few choice quotes here.

These are the typical Homer quotes according to it. Do? Do I smell cup. Do I ever? The classic early Cupcake runner on The Simpsons. The Simpsons love Cupcake. It also does mention Homer loves pork chops, bowling, and Mambo music. So in his case, I think they just copy pasted the 89-cats release.

Yeah, these are all like Season 1 Story Bible, Homer things. It's like they haven't seen the show before. And they're going off of like, yeah, like an early flyer or I don't know. Yeah, like or an early trading card with facts about it. Here's Marge quotes that they say are important. for licensers to know, wait, you forgot your lunches. They're there, Homer. And I don't think that would be a very good idea.

They're there, Homer. And Bart Tsar, I'm Bart Simpson, who the hell are you? Smooth move, man. Don't have a cow Homer. That's the full quote. And Fun has a name, and it's Bartholomew J. Simpson. Oh, sorry, Icarumba is on there. So that is still.

Thank God. And Lisa's best quotes, after her press release also mentions that Lisa loves ponies and the happy little elves, which is not the case in 1994. But her quotes are, oh, brother, stop it, Bart. And it's up to you whether you confess to mom and dad. But I just want you to know, I'm going to tell them myself in six minutes. Don't recall that quote, but it also feels like they're looking at merchandise for quotes. Right.

Yeah. T-shirts and things like that. I feel like that one really is just fully made up that third one. Unless that's from a short, I've forgotten. I really think Lisa never said that one. I'm looking on Frankie. I'm not getting it. And also they have within here,

you can find a listing. Like, that's the About the show section I was reading from there. But they also have a listing of every chalkboard gag, including which ones are not. If you see, they're like, none, none, none are listed there too. And they have a synopsis of every episode in the first hundred here that you can read from, including Burns' air. Mr. Burns almost bites the big one,

while taking a bubble bath and aware of his own mortality realizes he has no air to inherit his vast empire. And they list the guest voices, but in the cases of Dustin Hoffman and Michael Jackson, they just put question mark, question mark, question mark. Oh, I see. Not their pseudonyms. No, just, yeah, you know what, that's actually not following the deal right there, I would say. That was just some of the fun, this classic press release that now I've saved forever and could share with you listeners out. You know what, I should, to pay back all of the scripts I've gotten off of Internet Archive, I should just scan these and put these on Internet Archive myself.

Give it to the people. I want to see that crappy PR copy preserved for all to see. Cash Calabunga. That's where they say it's like, oh, it's about $1.5 million per episode. That's how they were selling it then. I was trying to look up what my local thing was that week, but I could not find any Jacksonville listings for it. I did see in Orlando that the Simpsons was at Fox between Family Matter and Coach.

That was where it aired there. Though I did learn that Fox 30 in my neighborhood did have the distinction of being the first ever clear channel channel. So Monopoly was born out of my local. Well, of course, that had to begin in Florida. Of course, yes. After No Disgrace, like home. Oh, and then, how did the Simpsons do in the ratings in syndication? Actually, very well, the Simpsons did 5.9 million.

million views in January 1995, for instance, according this one variety article, which was very high for sitcoms, though comparatively, Wheel of Fortune did 15 million viewers on the same nights weekly or daily. Yeah, the Simpsons is not getting the 50 to 100 demographic in 1994. Also, variety noted, the Simpsons had big competition from a similarly named TV event in the fall of 1994. The O.J. Simpson trial. Well, that's perfect synergy. It was. Yeah, once you're done watching the Simpson trial footage of the day, you then would watch the Simpsons after five in your local market. That was living back then. OJ really was a Bart style rapscallion. With those monkey signs of his.

For months, it was all TV was the OJ trial, just over and over again. Here's another aspect of the Simpsons where, yes, the OJ trial was beating most daytime talk show stuff. live coverage in most markets. It was more hurting like the Ricky Lakes. Like it was being sold as daytime TV. Also because if it was live from the East Coast, or sorry, if it was live from the West Coast, the OJ trial stuff would probably be rapping about maybe six

for East Coast viewers earlier in the day if you're in the West Coast. Also, when it came to the cuts, I found several other big cuts that were there that, like the one that made the least sense to me, and this came up when we covered the Hungry, Hungry Homer episode. So this is way after 1994. for, but they cut out the mayor of Albuquerque ending of it. Like, it just ends with Homer's happy ending.

Like that, when I was trying to look up, that was the most, like, significant story-related cut I could find listed by the hardcore fans in the old internet that's been archived. Yeah, I guess whoever was cutting these episodes had an eye for what was a joke and what was relevant to the story. Yeah, like they would cut things, you know, like when Krusty sang his herpes song in the Burns' Casino episode, they're like, well, we don't need this, do we? Like, they would cut that. Or Martin playing his loot for Bart in Bart's friend falls in love. That was a cut. People on the No Homers Club were sad about when they

were, there's a whole saved forum post from No Homers Club in 2005. They were like, what did you miss the most from all of the syndication cuts? I would miss that. That was a great moment, too. Apparently, Kang and Kodos in their long laughter often got cut. That makes sense. Those things like, I mean, did they ever cut like side show Bob stepping on a rake? Like, did they cut any of those down. Do you know about that? Oh, you know, that one I check. Well, I'll say the Simpsons archive, this one, I don't want to cast dispersions on them, but they seem to imply in their ancient document. They think it got extended for the syndicated cuts, the Rake sequence. Interesting. At least that's what the Simpsons Archive says. That didn't sound familiar to me.

Yeah, I'm looking at that document. The last revision was 18 years ago. Oh, sorry, no, no, no, 28 years ago. I apologize. Oh, here's another. big cut they made that people complained about a no homer's club in who shot mr burns part two and homer has rickets and they pull down the sunblocking machine that all got cut to and also the scene about smart drinks in la law from marge on the land people are really upset about that one being cut i've wasted my life we've talked about this and everybody listening to this is a simpsons fan but everybody probably is a different ordered story so it's probably worth like underlining the fact that when Simpsons aired, like that was kind of it, you know, unless you were a, like, you know,

tail of the tape recorder. But even that, it was inconvenient to go, you know, cue it up again. So you didn't see, sometimes it was just you saw the episode and that was it and you remembered it, but you only, you couldn't quite remember of that, you remembered it correctly or there was no way to check unless it aired in a rerun, you know, and then you never knew quite what rerun was going to air. It was kind of down to check the TV guide and things like that. So then syndication comes out. And, you know, people, I'd remember quoting The Simpsons to friends before syndication in high school. But I think that whole explosion of everybody quoting The Simpsons and everybody knowing like the Simpsons from seasons like one through six, even if they weren't watching at that time, that really exploded because of syndication.

Because it was a long time before the DVDs even came out. Yeah, Nick, thanks for pointing that out. That was a really different era in that the Simpsons, they were not even released on VHS quite yet. They could have made a killing, putting two out on a tape and selling it for 30 or 20 bucks. That would come later in the 90s for some reason. I don't know why they didn't capitalize on that. But yeah, if you did not have access to the Henry Gilbert archives, like many of us didn't, you would occasionally record an episode, but then the rest of the episodes would have to live in your mind for the first five years of the show.

And the fact that they would just be airing every day, you finally could go back to them and say, oh, this is the one where this happens, or this is that funny thing that Homer said that I forgot about because it aired when I was eight once and I could never go back to it. Yeah, and in a way, like, syndication can cheap in a show,

like it can make it seem, and The Simpsons, I remember when it happened, it did seem less special because you didn't have to, it was everywhere. You know, it felt like, okay, it's on all the time now. It's not like, you know,

you were still going to tune in Sunday for the new one, but it was a little less rare, you know? Yeah, it felt slightly less special, but it didn't make it any less fun to watch. Like, I think that could happen. Like, the bloom could come off the rows with certain shows if they were just on all the time. You'd be like, okay, enough, quit jamming this down my throat.

But I think because the Simpsons is so dense and rewatchable and rewards repeat viewing, that syndication didn't really dampen my enthusiasm for it at all. Oh, and when I was checking that cuts document, I checked one more thing, which was Al Jean has mentioned on commentaries that he always thought was funny that after the Janet Jackson incident, into the wardrobe malfunction. They were told do less nudity on the show, less funny butts. And so he would mention that they would be told to cut out a scene

where you would see Bart's butt from an upcoming episode. But then on syndication in the afternoon or like at 5 o'clock, you're seeing all the nudity from the pre-2000 episodes. I want to go back briefly to when this first rolled out because I'm just remembering my initial thoughts from that time period in that I was watching a lot of TV like Henry said. We were watching six hours a day, seven, if there was something good on.

And I was used to the idea of they made all these shows before I was born. And now they're just all in syndication and I can watch them all every day. I was not quite used to the idea of shows that I lived through the beginning of now entering syndication. So when they started airing promos for syndication on The Simpsons in, I want to say August, I thought, I can't believe this. This is happening. The Simpsons is the most important thing to me. And now I can see it's beyond watch my recordings, beyond once a week. It will be every day of my life.

you'll never be away from it ever so I did try to look up though the nudity stuff and the only one I could find and this was checking against I basically used the hardcore nudity sequence to check like okay did these scenes stay and at least according to the Simpsons archives

none of scenes like Homer's impression of Mr. Burns or come back giant diaper those remained in the episodes with bare butts the only cut bottom I could find was from a star is burned apparently they did cut the lost Dutchman's mind

and the windy valley of Bart's photo of his rear end. Like they didn't even cut the hardcore nudity musical sequins from 138 when that replayed in syndication. I'm not sure if you mentioned it, but like natural born kissers would just air in full. Yes, yeah, there's no way they could cut the new. And that has female nudity, which is not funny like Homer's button.

So the Simpsons syndication as it was rolling along, the first time they updated the package of episodes was February 5th, 1996, where the first additional episode of the package began with Itchy and Scratchy Land. That was the first like, oh, we're getting, like, if you were a nerd watching every day like we were, you would go like, oh, Itchy and Scratchy Land, they're starting to get season six episodes, you might start to say.

And according to the Simpsons Archive, basically the first two seasons started getting taken out of rotation in 1999. That's when Fox started, or at least that's, when they stopped getting rerun dates for season one and season two episodes, according to the Simpsons archive. That does make sense. I feel like they definitely at that point did not want to show you season one and probably were a little iffy about season two, despite those being the most watched seasons of the show ever.

And we were not quite in DVD town yet. And then that's interesting. As 2001 rolls around as we're getting into the new millennia and the Simpson syndication is still going strong, that's when the DVDs roll out. and so you have an alternative to watching the reruns and they're uncut. But there's also, this is when a new thing happens that the Simpsons totally miss out on and when things shift, which is Adult Swim and other cable networks showing reruns of sitcoms. Now, Adult Swim and similar can't afford Simpsons.

Well, actually, there's a bigger reason for that, but I'll just say, Simpsons aren't part of the deal. So they have to get canceled shows that Fox is licensing for way cheaper because they think they're dead. Family Guy and Futurama. And so I do think in the vacuum of No Simpsons on cable, that's partially why Family Guy and Futurama became huge hits on Adult Swim. And that's why other shows too

that were like one-season shows that just got canceled or never even had whole seasons air like Mission Hill or the Oblongs. Those got to live on. And partially it's because the Simpsons just was not on cable period. Also, I don't know if you guys remember, do you remember when South Park went into network syndication. Do you remember this in your areas? No, I think I said stop watching broadcast

by that point. By the second half of the aughts, like 05, 06-ish, I think it was, South Park did a deal to air their episodes on network. They would air in the late night slots. I remember catching a few of them. But if you remember when on the regular episodes of South Park, they said they couldn't show Muhammad and they would just show like text on white text on a black screen. I watched a few episodes and the Walmart episode, this is the one I remember the most, in the Walmart episode where the Walmart executive hangs himself and then shits himself, it just showed up on screen, white text on black saying, in this scene, the Walmart executive hung himself and defecated. They couldn't show it.

That's a clever way to acknowledge a censorship, but also let the people know what they're missing. Do you think the South Park people did that or had any say in it, or do you think once it's in the network's hands? I wonder, because the South Park guys met and Trey, They were pretty hands-on more than the Simpsons and Gracie people were with those deals. That's why they're billionaires now is because they had the rights to those things. So yes, why was there this open spot in cable for the Simpsons, like a big Simpson-sized hole in cable reruns?

Because cable reruns were also a big part of you'd get broadcast network when it was fresh, and then you'd get the cable reruns, not just Nick at Night, but like, I don't know about you guys, but not only did I watch like, Nick at Night, treated like Mary Tyler Moore going on their thing as such an event. I just watched all of it because of that. Or soap. I watched all the soap on Comedy Central because of how they

promoted it so well. And also it was actually like a week. It was a linear show. So you actually could like marathon it pretty good. Or Rhoda. I wish I'd have, you know, I've kicked myself every day that when we got to be in the same room with Julie Kavanaer, I didn't tell her. I watched every episode of Rhodo when I was a child because

it was on E. It was on the E network and Garfield's voice was on it. That's why I watched it all of the time. I think I only watched it for Julie Kavanaugh. I'm like, oh, that's Marge. It was a mix of Mars and Lorenzo music for me. Though I guess if I had brought that up, she might have just been like,

she did Lorenzo music before he was on that show. Like, I don't know, maybe that would have been sweet to her or made her sad, remembering a good friend who's been dead for 20-something years. Yeah, wasn't he just, who's the doorman, right? Carlton, your doorman? Yeah, but you never saw him, right? Yes, yeah, he was a magical voice. He appeared.

I remember there was like a Halloween episode where he showed up in costume wearing a mask, but that's the only time. And they tried to sell it as an animated series. They did an animated special once of a Carlton, the Dorman animated special. Sorry, I asked a question and then I didn't rhetorically answer it. Why weren't The Simpsons on cable? This is from a lot of reporting back when this ended, but apparently the Simpsons deal was in perpetuity, as in it was written when they thought the Simpsons would of course end at some point. And when it ended, then it could be licensed to cable. So the fact that the Simpsons never ended

was why it couldn't be put on cable for 20 years. So what was the first cable destination? Was it the FXX deal, Henry? It was indeed, yes. It was. I had totally forgotten these stories like, Bob, do you remember in 2011 there were rumors like the Simpsons might get canceled

because then it could be put on cable? I found those old news stories that I completely forgot about. Yeah, I think very vaguely, I do remember some hints of that, but every Simpsons ever. Marathon. That was the beginning of Simpsons on Cable. Yes. So I have the news story from when they finally made it official in 2013 because

basically they had been trying to get to renegotiate. I believe they had to renegotiate with every local programmer to get them to agree to allow it to be in cable. But here's how Variety reported on it in late 2013. 20th television has been handicapped in maximizing the value of the show and syndication because of open-ended Cindy agreements struck with local TV stations more than 20 years ago, which meant that the distrib was not going to make the same mistake twice. It took some creative horse trading

with the incumbent syndication stations to finally open up the cable VOD window for the show according to sources. So there you go. They had to make deals with those same guys. I would guess in those deals, and horse trading means also strip clubs. Cigars and stakeholders, yeah.

Yes. But yeah, that's why for years it was the simpsons longevity was hurting it for fox's business obviously gracey doesn't make any money off of this but it was why it couldn't go on cable was because it was said it can't go on cable until the show ends and the show never ended yeah every simpsons ever was in the summer of 2014 and that kicked off fxx airing the show regularly and then that came to an end when disney plus started or like how long did fxx actually have the Simpsons Henry. And then we also had the era in which we had the really rotten app. Yes, yeah. Here's one of the original ads for Every Simpsons Ever, which helpfully says the date in it.

That's why I clipped it out here. It is written that God created the world in six days. And on the seventh, he rested. The Simpsons Marathon on FX will last 12 days. Every belch. Every Welch. Every wealth. Every giant leap for mankind. Plus, the Simpsons movie. 552 episodes and not one moment of rest. Not bad for mere mortals. The Every Simpsons Ever Marathon.

It starts August 21 on FXX. Yeah, it's almost 20 years to the day. 20 years minus one month from the launch of Simpson syndication. was the launch of every Simpson ever. Yeah, and I think we forget how weirdly important this is. And it feels like it did inform the creation of our podcast because it got everybody online talking about The Simpsons again. And by 2014, I think everybody was on Twitter.

That's when we were all familiar with like, well, here's how this works, and it wasn't getting weird yet. And we were all just talking about our favorite moments. And this is when all the writers were joining and sharing their stories. It was a beautiful time. It was like if it had been, if social media had been around when syndication launched for The Simpsons, except now it was just an endless stream.

It also felt like the last time I paid attention to broadcast television or even cable. Like I'm a court cutter now, obviously. Yeah, I do remember that being a big deal and like wanting to take off work. You know, like it felt like to me what it felt like when people were taping those early episodes and getting together and doing like a Simpsons Fest. It kind of felt like an excuse to just kind of sit and watch them all. And yeah, Bob, that's when they launched Simpsonsworld.com, which was your way of streaming episodes on your phone, if you had a cable subscription at the correct level with Xfinity or any of those

other awful places. Yeah, the first four years of our show, you can hear Henry complain a lot about that app, which I've never gotten to use, but apparently it was very bad. You always had to watch ads. If you wanted to switch over to the commentary, it would just assume that was a new video, so it would show you an ad for something else. Oh, God, yes. Yeah.

Yeah, it was about serving you ads in addition to what you had signed up for, having to have a cable subscription, which, of course, I just used my mom's same. Yeah. That was a bad app. That was really bad. But it didn't get me thinking.

The fact that you could do the commentaries, it didn't work well, right? But is there just not a market? Because I feel like that's just like content there. I wonder this about certain movies too. And maybe it's just a niche thing. But big budgets went into producing all those for the Simpsons. And those like DVDs are legendary and their bonuses. Like, why wouldn't you just put those up on Disney?

Yeah, we talked about this a bunch, and I love this conversation because I also want to know what's going to happen with these commentaries. And it seems like they were recording commentaries for potential DVDs that were never released and they were planned for the app. So those never came out. Disney, they do have commentaries, not for the Simpsons. Weirdly enough, some movies have commentaries, but it is treated as a different video file you're playing. I don't think they have the technology. Well, it seems like they should have the technology to, like, layer in a new audio track because they do have different languages, of course. But it feels like it would be someone's job to do all of that and Disney is very cheap despite how insanely wealthy they are and how they own everything. They don't want to pay someone to do that. And I feel like it would take another round of legal clearances to have someone listen to the DVDs, decide like, is this actionable? Can they say this? That already went through an entire round at Fox. And of course, there is the disclaimer. You know, the views express on these commentaries are not the views of Fox or whatever. But I feel like Disney would want to give those a once over because certain things are slid. There are certain words that are now considered slurs that writers are saying on the commentaries and they are getting a little

spicy here and there for in ways that were acceptable at the time of the DVDs releases. So I feel like that's another issue. Shows with deep fandoms though, like even South Park, there were like commentaries and memorable things on those early DVDs too. And it seems like there would be an audience or maybe just that demographic is aging out of being that kind of consumer. But to me that there's a market for it. Well, so you hear all the streamers like Netflix or Disney Plus. they brag about like hours watched, hours watched. And so if you have a hit thing like The Simpsons that often is highly watched, you would think that they would want to then, even if it got them just, you know,

10% of their audience to rewatch another episode because of that commentary on it, that's hundreds of hours for virtually no extra effort. Yeah, it's way less expensive than to produce a new Billy Elish tie-in cartoon that's only a couple minutes that, you know, I don't want to watch. Yeah. I haven't checked this in a while. At one time, the Simpsons movie did have its commentary on Disney Plus, but none of the episodes. But only one of them, because there are two on the DVD. Interesting. Right, you're right. It's just the writer commentary. I think, if I remember right, not the animation side, which both are great commentaries.

But yeah, in general, I think Disney is very bad at doing that kind of preservation when obviously, again, they have limitless money, they've gotten the cheat code, they can just do whatever they want with their funds. but we do a lot of research for the What a Cartoon Movie podcast that involves seeing what extras there are they will rarely be on Disney Plus and if they are it's not the complete package you just have to go onto YouTube because thankfully people have ripped all of the extras from those DVDs and just throwing them up on there

and I feel like a similar gray market is beginning to exist for commentaries if you decide to download TV shows instead of streaming them illegally of course you will find that often the people ripping those have retained the commentaries, which I really love. The second audio track is there for a lot of the shows you can pirate now. So I hope piracy lights a fire under these people's asses to say,

okay, there is an incentive. We need to offer the same thing the pirates are offering. Yeah, I've been doing like cutdowns of the best DVD commentaries from some movies and things. Like the one for used cars is incredible and the Kurt Russell movie. And there's just a bunch, like the Armageddon one where Ben Affleck is like dissing the plot of the movie while it's playing. You know, like there's some great stuff that just kind of lost. So I've been trying to like listen to them all and are the ones that remember being good and like rip them and cut them together into like just cut down of good moments. But beyond that, you know, you can't post the

whole movie with the commentary. So it's kind of up to the copyright holders to do that. And as a fan of commentaries, I found that a lot of people are just uploading them to YouTube. Of course, without the video attached. But you can't really flag those. No one is looking for that audio. No robots understand like what that means and what it is. So I went to YouTube for a few times just to listen to the movie commentary for the movie commentary for that was on YouTube. So I listened to it there. But yeah, it's becoming an interesting source for things like that. You still have to do the Pink Floyd Dark Side Wizard of Oz sync up though at that point, right? Yeah. So it'd be nice if they just made them like available. I'd pay for it in a digital way to access those. Nowadays, sometimes

4K re-releases will get to keep all of the old stuff like Bob, you made the great point. The UHF 4K still has the specifically dated Weird Al commentary on it. Yeah, it has all of the extras in which they're all introed by Weird Al filmed in 2001. They're all in 480P. Simpson's World lasted a short amount of time in the grand scheme of things five whole years. It was 2014 to 2019. That's when Disney Plus took in the Simpsons and Simpsons World died the same day pretty much once the Disney Plus began. As far as broadcast goes, it was on FXX, and then it moved over to Freeform, which was used to be the Disney Family Channel and the ABC Family Channel and the Family Channel.

So that's what Freeform is. Though then it left Freeform September 28, 2024 and moved back to FXX. And me and Bob have also complained about how whenever you check cable programming, it's basically four shows. And that's FXX right now. If you turn to it, you'll either get a block of Simpsons, a block of King of the Hill, family guy, Bob's Burgers, or a movie. That's all you get on FX. And the block will be, what, nine hours long?

Yes, yeah, Pete. Oh, well, I finished my nine hours of Simpsons now for four hours of Family Guy into three hours of Bob's Burgers, then back around to Simpsons, and maybe one airing of Deadpool, maybe. That's the state of like, meanwhile, the syndication, I think the Simpsons finally is being shared a lot less in syndication. Listeners, I would love to hear from folks in the U.S. to see if it's still showing on your local broadcast networks because I checked my local listings

and they were not showing The Simpsons anymore in my area. So really The Simpsons just broadcasts on TV, though strange on cable, though strangely, and also some Select Simpsons episodes are on ABC.com for no particular reason. That is very odd. What is happening now? I guess the Disney thing makes sense, but yeah.

Yeah, it's like five episodes from season 31 or something. It's really weird. It's the only other official place you can watch Simpsons on the internet. I think maybe that was Disney testing the waters like, what if we, or it's them trying to scare Fox of like, hey, maybe we'll put this on ABC Fox. We can legally put a few episodes on the ABC.com. That's where we're at with Simpsons Television now, like the syndication era long over, the cable era over. It's a thing you watch probably on Disney Plus or off of old DVDs if you're an old man in their 40s. It happens.

Yeah, this was a great topic and we got more than two hours out of it. And I just was thinking just how important this is to The Simpsons. If The Simpsons only aired once a week, we would not be talking about it on a podcast for 10 years. This is so informative to so many generations of Simpsons fans and thinking about my own life when now I'm incredibly online, before I was incredibly attached to the television. And my entire life was built around what's on TV and those kind of habits. And yeah, this was such like a foundational important touchstone for me and so many other people. I think of all the microwave meals I've eaten while watching Simpsons in syndication. It really helped my game in that department.

But yeah, I do agree. I don't think you can overstate how much impact it had with. I feel like the whole quotability of The Simpsons, the fact that people like my niece and nephew and Joe's niece and nephew grow up and watch like early seasons are because it was syndicated. It was everywhere and they were watching older episodes. but contemporarily. And I think that's why it is such an evergreen show

and probably why it's still on now. Now, when you mention food, yeah, I think if I taste Kraft, macaroni and cheese in my mouth when I think about watching Afternoon Simpson. It's fish sticks for me. Yeah, Hot Pock, I'm sure. It at all to those episodes. Yeah.

Last thought I had on is like how kids, I watched old TV shows because we were in a cable age, but there still wasn't that you couldn't watch everything. You had like tops, I would say 15 good channels you wanted to watch that weren't like news or sports or something. So I watched a lot of old reruns of like 10, 20 or older year old shows. And like to kids, maybe with The Simpsons, but like if back then I could have only watched the Simpsons all of the time on a streamer, I would have never watched every episode of Rota or soap or Mr. Ed or any of that.

Maybe to the kids of today, like season six of the Simpsons was what Gilligan's Island was to me. Yeah, actually, it's probably older now than Gilgans Island was when we were kidding. Hey, you know what, that deserves the scary math jingle. I don't play that at all. Please do. Lisa, are you doing math? We could also resurrect the Death Stalks You at Every Turn jingle, but it's about us this time. Oh, yeah, I miss that one.

You know what? I'll give that a play. Death Stalks you at every turn! I miss it, but people are big buzzkills about us laughing at the deaths of others, so. Come on. Everybody likes a good celebrity death pool and things like that. So, yeah, bring it back. Everyone's at a while.

I say grow up, everybody. But not, don't die. No, no, no. The point thing is not to die. Don't grow that far. That's the Simpson syndication history. That was a lot of fun to go through. Yeah, yeah.

I had a blast. Nick, thank you so much for being on the show. Belated thanks to Joe and you're part of the Found Footage Fest. And currently you're on tour. I was looking at the dates. This goes live on the Patreon on the 5th of November and on the free feet of the 12th November. Right now, you're in Illinois, and you're going to be in Wisconsin and it looks like Minnesota pretty soon too. Yeah, we try to book those around like when we're back home for like Thanksgiving or Christmas because that's where our families live. So yeah, we do a lot of Midwestern dates around late November and December. But yeah, we're in like, you know, 80 cities on this tour between now and I guess next summer. So you can find us close to your city and then we have a YouTube show called VCR party where we are live every Tuesday night at 9 o'clock Eastern watching new VHS tapes. We've found.

And you know what? It's inspired me. I'm going to go through some of those recordings of syndicated Simpsons that we have and see what we could pull from them. There's got to be some good promos that you can play on your show or commercials that just aren't out there on the internet. The found footage fest is always awesome. When they come to your town, see them. You guys are always so nice to offer us. You know, you put us on the list. We have to feel like big, fancy. We have nothing else to offer anybody of value. So if we can put, give a name to a door person, that's the least we can do. And I get to see you guys in person for very quickly, long enough for a quick hug, but you guys are so popular. It's hard to, there's only so much free time you got. Well, we're

waiting for our syndication money to start rolling in. I know, we got like almost 300 episodes of our YouTube show. Maybe, maybe syndication will come back in a big way and we'll, that'll be our big retirement. We need to connect you with that Lorimar guy we met. He can make the deals for you. I feel like somebody found him floating in his pool a few weeks later. Hey, I'll buy the cigars. We'll go, you know, I'm vegan, but I'll have a big. baked potato at a steakhouse and then we'll go to an ethical strip house where they let them pick their own music and, you know,

we can all feel good about it. And then yeah, we'll close a deal. Adopt a kitten afterwards. Yeah, exactly. It'll offset everything. But thank you so much, Nick, and to Joe for a mirror. Yeah, thank you, Nick and Joe. Thanks, guys. So thank you once again to Joe Pickett and Nick Pruer from Found Footage Festival. Please check out their show when they come

to your town. It's a great time. And please check them out online. They've got great stuff for you. But as for us, if you want to check out more of what we do, and get all of our podcasts, ad free. And one week ahead of time, go to patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons. That's all you got to do and sign up for five bucks a month. And when you do, you get ad free podcasts. If you don't like ads, well, that will get rid of the ads, sir or madam. And then on top of that, you get access to over eight years of bonus podcasts.

They're all full length. There's over 200 of them and more to come. And they cover things like Futurama and King of the Hill, Mission Hill, Batman, the animated series, and The Critic. And that five bucks a month also gets you one new episode of both, Talking of the Hill and Talking Futurama every month. It's a great deal. It's only $5 a month. It supports the show and it gets you so much great stuff at patreon.com

slash Talking Simpsons. And there is a $10 level as well that will get you all the $5 stuff, of course. But you also get one very immensely huge podcast once a month for patrons of that level. What is that podcast, Henry? Bob is talking about our premium podcast. What a cartoon movie, which is more like you get three extra podcasts a month because we talk for five, even six hours long about an animated feature film. If you loved all the history and business stuff in this one,

then you'll love hearing us talk about so many of the classic feature films we have done. Last month, we covered the fantastic Mr. Fox, the Wes Anderson directed film that adapted the classic book. And before that, we covered the Lego movie. And at the end of this month, you're going to hear us talk about Pee Wee's Christmas special. And those are just the most recent, what a cartoon movies we've done. Years and years of them we've been doing hundreds of hours right there of us covering tons of Disney films, Pixar films, Studio Ghibli films, junk like Shrek and Cool World. We have so much nerdy, wonderful information to share with you at the $10 level.

And you get it in addition to all of the ad-free bonuses Bob mentioned to. So please sign up today at patreon.com slash Talking Simpsons to see everything you're missing. And I've been one of your host, Bob Mackey. You can find me on Blue Sky and Letterbox and many other places as Bob. servo and I have another podcast. It is called Retronauts. It's about classic games, retro games, if you will.

You can find that wherever you find podcasts or go to Patreon.com slash Retronauts and sign up there to support that show and get a ton of bonuses as well. And Henry, what about you? You can find me on Blue Sky and Instagram as Talking, Henry. I'm H-E-N-E-R-E-G on Letterboxed also. And if you're following both of us for all we're posting on social media, you should also be following at Talk Simpsonspod in those places because at Talk

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